Webloggin » John McCain in Today’s Edition of Trying to ‘out left the lefty’

Try as hard as I can I can’t get over the fact that John McCain, being the better of the 2 bad choices, is not good enough. I used to sort of rally for him, but why?

Recently McCain has been on this green kick, which is OK in principle if you have a plan to pollute less and reduce dependence of foreign oil. I think that’s a plan we can all support. But john McCain, the maverick, always has to take it one step further, to the left.

Today’s round of trying to “out left the lefty” saw John McCain at an energy conference in California sitting beside none other than ‘no drill’ Schwarzenegger. His plan is high on left speak but low on solutions considering that one of McCain’s key proposals has already proven to be an abysmal failure when implemented by the U.S. government.

“Our federal government is never shy about instructing the American people in good environmental practice. But energy efficiency, like charity, should begin at home,” McCain said before conducting an energy round-table at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

The Arizona senator also called for a redesign of the national power grid so power is better distributed where it’s needed and the country has the capacity to run electric vehicles that he wants automakers to supply.

McCain noted the federal government buys 60,000 nonmilitary and non-law enforcement vehicles a year.

“From now on, we’re going to make those civilian vehicles flex-fuel capable, plug-in hybrid or cars fueled by clean natural gas. If our great goal is to move American transportation toward lower carbon emissions, then it should start with the federal fleet,” he said.

Among those on the panel was Schwarzenegger, a McCain backer who opposes the proposal to end the federal ban on offshore drilling. McCain has said he would leave the decision to the states if the moratorium is lifted.

I don’t know what guy got in his ear with the latest polling numbers but he sure wasn’t looking at the numbers on the right where conservative support for McCain is lackadaisical at best. This will not help.

Perhaps McCain didn’t get the memo but flex-fuel vehicles, which are alcohol based, burn dirtier and are less efficient than other alternatives, especially when you burn regular gas in them. To make matters worse, and yes, it gets worse, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was being investigated in 2007 for his administrations flex-fuel debacle that resulted in more pollution and no savings in fuel consumption. What a perfect photo-op.

SACRAMENTO — Two state Senate committees on Monday scheduled an investigative hearing to examine why Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration purchased a new fleet of large sedans and trucks — touting them as green machines — but for two years filled them with regular gas, spewing more pollution into the air than many cars in the old fleet.

John McCain even lifted a sentiment from a Democrat that was leading the Schwarzenegger investigation.

“when it’s your administration where you have enormous influence on how government runs, not to follow-through and making sure our state buildings are green is a failure, quite simple.” – Senator Dean Florez (D, California 16th District)

“Our federal government is never shy about instructing the American people in good environmental practice. But energy efficiency, like charity, should begin at home,” – Senator John McCain (Arizona, R one day, D the next)

So forgive me if I think John McCain is full of crap when he regurgitates the failed policies of the very recent past using similar rhetoric that was being touted by a California Democrat.

The main problem with flex-fuel is that it gives auto-manufacturers a loop hole where they can meet a federal standard but the solution doesn’t have to be used. You can still use gas with flex-fuel vehicles and thus you don’t have a true solution. Looks good on paper, fails in real life as demonstrated in a 2 week old Wall Street Journal article that details how the U.S. Postal service is managing to burn more gas and emit more pollution using flex fuel than before they converted their fleet even though they are not driving more miles. To borrow a liberal expression of frustration, sheesh! It has already been tried and it has been a miserable failure. It’s understandable that McCain didn’t catch wind of this because it appeared in the Wall Street Journal and not the New York Times.

Getting the U.S.Postal Service to deliver mail efficiently is hard enough. Getting it to deliver it fuel-efficiently is apparently even harder.

Bloomberg reports on the latest unintended consequence of the U.S. government’s obligation to outfit many of its vehicle fleets with cars and trucks that run on alternative fuels. That 1992 mandate almost never translates into really alternative-fuel vehicles, like ones that run on natural gas or even electricity. Instead, about 99% of government purchases are “flex-fuel” vehicles that can burn ethanol, but usually don’t.

The Post Office bought 30,000 flex-fuel vehicles between 1999 and 2005, Bloomberg notes. The result? Fuel consumption shot up—and not because mail routes got longer:

The trucks, derived from Ford Motor Co.’s Explorer sport- utility vehicle, had bigger engines than Jeeps from the former Chrysler Corp. they replaced. A Postal Service study found the new vehicles got as much as 29 percent fewer miles to the gallon. Mail carriers used the corn-based fuel in just 1,000 of them because there weren’t enough places to buy it.

Car companies like General Motors like flex-fuel vehicles because they aren’t much more expensive to make, and they boost the compay’s overall fuel-economy rating. Plenty of persistent voices call for making all U.S. cars and trucks flex-fuel vehicles as a way to wean the U.S. off OPEC oil.

But the problem’s the same: Flex-fuel trucks don’t really flex, because nobody is picking up the tab to overhaul the whole network of gasoline stations in the U.S. to make them ethanol-friendly. – Going Postal: With Flex-Fuel Trucks, Postal Service Burns MORE Gas

And what did John McCain get for his efforts to court the left with all his greenie, carbon emissions rhetoric? Nothing, nada, zilch. In fact it has been turned into a negative by the mainstream media.

AP:

McCain drives a 2003 Cadillac CTS, a sedan the Environmental Protection Agency says gets 16 to 24 miles per gallon and emits about 9.6 tons of greenhouse gases annually. When campaigning, he’s ferried by the Secret Service using a fleet of Chevrolet Suburbans, a full-size SUV the EPA estimates gets 12 to 20 mpg and emits 9 to 13 tons of greenhouse gases.

CBS News:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opposes offshore drilling off the coast of California, joined McCain on the panel.

Detroit Free Press:

But the Republican’s proposals lacked key details, and the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, decried his plans as “tinkering at the edges.”

[~snip]

Comments lead to confusion

McCain said that to boost development of hybrids and electric vehicles, he would launch a $300-million award for a battery pack “that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

The senator offered no other details, leaving some observers confused about his intent. There are no commercially available plug-in hybrid vehicles today, and the few electric vehicles on the market range from low-power minicars using traditional batteries to the Tesla Roadster, a $100,000 two-seater that uses lithium-ion cells found in computers and other devices.

CNN Lead with Obama:

(CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama blasted Sen. John McCain’s energy plans Tuesday as “gimmicks,” saying his policies “will only increase our oil addiction for another four years.”

So much for the press being enamored with John McCain’s flex-fuel version of the straight talk express. It’s not the proposal that hurts McCain, it’s the language.

If he keeps talking like this he will drive that express right off the tracks.